THE life and work of Dr B R Ambedkar is being commemorated all over the country on the occasion of his 125th birth anniversary on April 14. Ambedkar – the anti-caste fighter, the emancipator of dalits, the social reformer, the architect of the Constitution and champion of women’s rights – are among the various facets being highlighted of this remarkable figure.  At the same time, Ambedkar’s legacy is being contested and sought to be appropriated by the communal-sectarian forces. 

What is necessary at this juncture is to retrieve Ambedkar’s radical democratic vision and his message of social emancipation as the basis for a true democracy. Because, first and foremost, Ambedkar was an iconoclast who took on the iniquitous social order at the heart of which lay the exploitative caste system. It is in this context that it would be insufficient to characterise Ambedkar only as a social reformer. He did not aim to reform the caste system or Hinduism as many of his contemporaries sought to do. He denounced both caste and Hinduism.  As early as 1925, Ambedkar organised a “Manusmriti Dahan Din” when he publicly burnt the Manusmriti.  He saw Gandhiji’s anti-untouchability campaign as a device to serve the interests of the upper castes and to maintain the varna system.  It was Ambedkar’s radical democratic philosophy which motivated his uncompromising fight against caste and the brahmanical order which sustained it.

Ambedkar can be viewed as a liberal democrat given his political and philosophical inclinations, but it would be incorrect to see him only in this light.  There are some who hail Ambedkar as a “Constitutional democrat”, but this is also doing him a disservice.  Ambedkar’s radicalism broke the bourgeois liberal boundaries. He warned that the Constitution and political democracy that was established will be superficial unless there was economic and social equality.  His economic programme was far ahead of the conventional bourgeois norms.  When there was opposition to his advocacy of State control of the economy on the grounds that it would curb `liberty’, he responded, “To whom and for whom is this liberty?  Obviously this liberty is the liberty to the landlords to increase rents, for capitalists to increase hours of work and reduce rate of wages”. 

Ambedkar was a consistent fighter for women’s rights.  As the law minister in the first cabinet after independence, he piloted the Hindu Code Bill, which provided for property and inheritance rights to women. Faced with resistance from within the Congress and the Hindu conservative forces, Ambedkar chose to resign rather than compromise on this issue.

The BJP and the Sangh combine have been actively trying to appropriate Ambedkar by crudely distorting his thought and writings taking selective quotes out of context from his writings.  He is projected a Hindu social reformer and an implacable opponent of Islam. His renunciation of Hinduism and his conversion to Buddhism is thus sought to be glossed over.  The purpose is to convert Ambedkar into a dalit icon in the Sangh pantheon of Hindu heroes. 

There can be no greater travesty of the truth. Ambedkar was totally opposed to the ideology of the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS. He wrote, “If Hindu raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for the country”.  For Ambedkar, liberty, equality and fraternity were the most cherished principles for a civilized society.  The very concept of varnashrama dharma and the Hindu shastras were, according to him, antithetical to these principles.  Ambedkar would have bitterly fought against the attempt to coopt dalits into a pan-Hindu order which is directed against the Muslims and other religious minorities.

During the freedom struggle, various currents and ideologies surfaced in the quest for emancipation.  There were differences in outlook and ideology of the Communists and Ambedkar. But there were large areas of commonality as both strove for economic and social emancipation which alone can underpin independence and liberty.

It is necessary to rescue Ambedkar from being an icon denuded of his radical emancipator vision. Many dalit leaders have been guilty of placing him on a pedestal while reducing his legacy to reservation and quota politics which makes them adjuncts of ruling class politics. The broad emancipatory sweep and the universality of his message should infuse the dalit and anti-caste movements.  Such a platform of social emancipation is also integral to the class struggle in India.  This is the abiding relevance of Ambedkar for Communists in India.

At a time when the forces of reaction have gathered under the banners of communalism and neo-liberalism, the two currents, the Left movement and Ambedkarite movement, are converging.  If this wider unity is to be carried forward, the true significance and legacy of Ambedkar has to be grasped and imbibed. 

This issue of People’s Democracy carries two special articles which bring out the transformative vision and thought of Dr Ambedkar.

(April 13, 2016)